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SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH: 



A REVIEW OF HAMMOND'S AND FULLER'S 

AXD 

CHANCELLOR HARPER'S MEMOIR ON THAT SUBJECT, 

Frora the Oct. No. (1845) qfihe Southern Quarterly. 



ojg the popular school books, some forty or fifty years ago, was a plain prose 
edition of Esop's tables. The stories, told in the simplest possible language, were 
illustrated with woodcuts, very coarse it J^rue, but sufficiently expressive. One of 
■ resented a naked blackamoor standing in a tub of water. Around him is 
assembled a group of women — busy bodies in matters not their own — matrons not 
over attentive to their own household? — widows seeking somebody to care about — 
spinsters anxious for notoriety, and not. scimulou-; about the means for obtain'::!./ it. 
With much clamor and gossip, and infinite fa!, they are employed; some of tin n 
throwing water on the black; some in scrufawng him with mops and brushes: ar \ the 
rest in encouragiu ■ and directing the efforts ofthsir conipanions. The labor of lov< .-was 
intended to wa I ackamoor white: it ended, as Esop tells us, in the death o?the 

he experiment, the ladies, no doubt, disc; 
inccess; the benevolence of their own motives; the folly and . ma- 
of those, who refused to believe that black could be made white; and the 
i\C. vantages of amalgamation with the interesting patient, when the process of r< 

Esop's benevolent women were the pr( I «t abolitJb' 

tionists. These, also are busy with their tub and bJackamoor. Mi.vj; 
and Tappan his bucket, and John Quincy Adams ! inve n ted scr 

the right of petition — with exemplary 

stand by in delirious ecstacy, and the ' ; Martineaus, and : 

with all the abolition matrons and maidens of blushing New-England. 
and eloquent on the necessity and benefits of immediate amalgamation. Th< seal 
Modern tran-iu; olors, is not only as warm and clamo,or.s 

as that of their | result to the object of I 

ion. 
If the operator fr experiment to subjects among themselves, the 

Southern people would neither complain nor interfere. We should feel some sym- 
pathy for the po :onae wonder at the crazy white, but there is no Paul- 
Pryisra in tbe character of the Soutl would leave our neighbors of old, or 
England, to conduct their own affairs in tbeir own way. Indeed we are so far 
acquainted with the ethics offariaticigm, and have so much charity for folly, as to be 

■ the abolitionists, if they should occasionally steal from the Southertg^ 
States a v- fir experim : hey often do, \. prisons and 

penitentiaries have absorbed their own — it would be unreasonable to reqniro that a 
fanatic should be able to respect t ty, or that a party should ac- 

10 virtually reject the author- 



Al5 

2 Skwery in the South. 

But these good people are not content to indulge their whims within their own 
limits, or, to any moderate extent, at our expense. They have a perfect mania for 
th« tub and scrubbing brush, and cannot be satisfied without thrusting them into the 
Southern States, and experimenting among us upon our slaves. We have, therefore, 
been compelled, from time to time, to tell them, in very plain terms, that we have no 
faith in their wisdom or their motives; that their passion fur intermeddling in what 
doea not concern them, has nothing in common with the pure and noble sentiment 
of christian benevolence, which is incompatible with anything malevolent or vindic- 
tive; that it is in truth the offspring of inordinate vanity, the love of excitement, or 
tie bastard ambition, which seeks power by other than the ordinary and legitimate 
modes. When, in the pursuit of their object, they send agents among us to amend 
our laws, we dismiss them with as much civility as the case permits. When they 
abuse the common council room of the nation to annoy the South, we are constrained 
to let them know that their agitation in Congress is a faithless violation of rights 
guaranteed by the Constitution, and which honest and honorable men could not fail 
To l espect— very moderate language, and altogether short of a just description of that 
arrogant and insolent surveillance over the social condition of the Southern States, 
established and kept up by societies and associations at the North, under the pitiful 
pretence of a right to discuss, or a right to petition, or benevolence, or religion, or 
some other glossing falsehood. 

But the people of the Southern States have never formally vindicated, until lately, 
the rightfulness, advantages, and necessity of slavery, as established among us. Some 
have thought it idle to reason with fanat inland others have been averse to the ex- 
Ncilement to which such a discussion might possibly lead, or, perhaps, they have dis- 
trusted the strength of their own position; whatever the reason may have been, they 
have abstained from any discussion of thj subject when it was possible to avoid it. 
J3ut a change is perceptible in the South Ai States. The perpetual din of the North- 
ml European press, has roused the mtention of our people. It is proper that it 
should do so. Continued attacks imrne* arguments unanswered, misrepresentation 
unexplained, and falsehoods unbranded, may produce evil consequences even among 
vos. It is due, therefore, even to our own people, to look the subject fairly in 
the face, to lay aside all scruple, and to challenge investigation. It is due ~a4§Qto 
jfiose ofthe Northern States — composing by far the greater number of their people— ^ 
vdio are not abolitionists, and who need information on a subject of which they have 
ial knowledge. The pamphlets at the head of our article, will show that 
tinguished and able men at the South have come to this conclusion; the 
ni proves that it has been from no lack of logic or wit, that the amis 
;,,,:'■ remained unanswered. 

ulebtet'/v' we believe, to Professor Dew, for the first clear and com- 
ment on )he subject of slavery. In a review of the debates in 
d Convention, he lias produced an argument on the subject, 
„. . cn a distinguished judge pronounces to be the most able and philosophic that he 
has met with in our time. He was followed by Chancellor Harper, who, in the 
yen" 183(5, delivered an oration, and in 18S7, read a memoir on the same subject, 
before the' Literary and Philosophical Society of South-Carolina. He takes the 
broad ground that slavery cannot be proven to be a moral, political, or social evil, or 
to be incompatible with a well regulated and happy civil polity. To those who have 
the happiness to know Chancellor Harper; the purity of his life; ihe fairness of his 
mind; the simplicity of his character; his love foj truth; his devotion to knowledge; 
the exactness of his taste; and the force and con\ ass of his intellect; it need hardly 
be said, that whatever he writes is worthy of serio is attention, not only for the abili- 
ty which it must exhibit, but because it. conies from a man of wisdom and virtue, the 
business of whose life is the conscientious and earnest seeking after truth. The 
Chancellor has been followed by Dr. Cartwright, the Rev. Dr. Fuller, and Governor 
Hammond, who have discussed the subject, in its several relations, with great ability.* 
Dr. Cartwright's article, in a former number of this review, is exceedingly ingeni- 

* &«e ako an able argument in the 3d No. of the Southern Review. 



Slavery in tlie South. 3 

ous and interesting, and well deserves a careful perusal. Governor Hammond's let- 
ters are in every body's hands, they have been published in various forms, and a large 
number of the pamphlet edition has been sent to England for circulation. They are 
written in that discursive but popular form, with intermingled logic, wit, and sarcasm, 
which commands the public favor, and gives them the best possible quality tor a 
book, that of being, like Randolph's speeches, readable by every body. We shall 
attempt to give a concise summary of the arguments of some of these gentlemen. 

The first topic that meets us, in their discussion of the question of slavery, is a sort 
Qfarswmentum ad hominem, as far as England and the North are concerned, lhe 
impu^ners of slavery and slaveholders in America, are the very people by whom 
slaves and slaveholders were established there. The capital which, in New-England, 
is now invested in presses and print shops for the slander of the slaveholder; for en- 
tictner negroes to fly from their masters; for cramming runaway negro orators to rival 
Birney and Tappan; for paving small traffickers in philanthropy to sneak into South- 
ern families, and chronicle lies in the intervals of fawning and feeding, was invested 
a few years ao-o in transporting negroes from Africa.* Being compelled by law to 
abandon the old trade of making the black a slave, the business men have taken up 
the new one of making him free. If the law permitted a return to the former traffic, 
there is no doubt that°both branches of the concern would be carried on with equal 
activity. Even now, the law to the contrary notwithstanding, according to the 
report of an American officer on the African station, Northern merchants furnish 
vessels and merchandize to the slavers on the coast of Africa, and in this manner 
faciliate the trade in slaves. But this, by no means, conflicts with the abolitionists 
carryino- on the trade of emancipation. It is quite possible, indeed, that the same 
parties may be active in both departments, and that Mr. Tappan may do a turn of 
business in making bond, as well as making free. It is of little moment to these 
revilers of their own countrymen, that all such libellers as they are, belong to the 
proverbially respectable order of evil birds who befoul their own nests. To the 
hunter after notoriety, or money, the cleanliness of the field is of small importance, 
or consideration. He is like the Roman emperor, who could find no unsavourry 
smell in the gold derived from the filthiest object of taxation. 

To this argumeatum ad hominen the people of England are even more exposed, 
than our own countrvmen. If individuals and nations are responsible for the neces- 
sary consequences of their acts, then is England responsible for slavery in the Unite* 
States. For more than a century, the English merchants carried on in this country, 
an extensive commerce in negro slaves. They bought them in Africa, transported 
them to America, and sold them to the planters, for large sums of money. Now a 
new fashion prevails, and the good people of England form societies, establish 
messes, and circulate books, pamphlets, and tracts, to revile the planters for holding 
the very slaves, which English capital, English ships, and English merchants pur- 
chased,' transported, and sold among them. Into this new current of national opinion 
all classes have fallen; from the Irish demagogue, to the English Duke; from Mrs. 
Mart.neau, to the Scotch ex-Chancellor; from Dickens— the incarnation of Cockney 
sentiment— to the Queen's consort, who spares an hour, occasionally, from nursing 
the numerous buds of the illustrious white and red rose of York and Lancaster, to ex- 
tend his care to the negro across the Atlantic. In this war upon a system of their 
own making, the English people as is common with them, have no selfish design 
whatever— no intermeddling disposition to supervise the. concerns of America, f Cuba, 
or Brazil. They do not make it a pretext for overhauling the vessels of other nations, 
and promoting their claim to supremacy on the ocean. They cover under it no sly 

* Even the clergy took part in the slave trade speculation. Dr. Stiles sent a barrel of rum V> 
Africa to purchase a negro; and, in due time, as Dr. Waylaud tells us, the Reverend trader receiv- 
ed a well-conditioned negro boy. 

* We say America for ths United States. It is the proper name of the United States. In Eu- 
rope, by America, they mean the United States: by Americans, they mean the citizens of the 
United States. Other parts of the continent have different names : Mexico, Brazil, Chili. Amer- 
ica is appropriated by us. To attempt to subetitute for it Alleghania, etc., » both unnecessary 
and ridiculous. 



4 Slavei-y in the South. 

schema for rebuilding their colonial prosperity, and correcting the blunders of their 
West India policy, by checking, in other countries, the growth of those productions 
which she has virtually abandoned, by the abolition of slavery in her own. Nothing 
like it — they are actuated by the purest benevobnee only — their captains of slavers 
hare all been converted into Howards, and have exchanged their zeal for making 
slaves, into an equal zeal for making freemen. 

From their anxiety to take care of the poor ot other nations, it might be naturally 
inferred that they have none at home — no rags, no wretchedness unequalled in any 
other country; no filthy hovels with mud floors, the common abode of pigs, poultry, 
and peasant; no crowded cellars, where families occupy each its corner; no millions 
pf paupers nevei k(\, never clothed, never warmed in winter; no children put to hard 
labor below ground; no girls at work among naked men; no examples of human de- 
gradation and suffering more brutal than any American imagination, unassisted by 
British Parliamentary Reports, could possibly conceive. Nothing of all this can ex- 
ist in England. The Parliamentary Reports must be false. If true, would not 
English hearts and hands be first and exclusively devoted to extirpate so horrible a 
condition of society? — would they write, declaim, expend thousands on a supposed 
abuse three thousand miles off, with which they have no connection, civil, social, or 
political, and of which they know little or nothing, whilst the horrors of their own 
hearths continue to cry to heaven for redress? Would they pass by their fellow-sub- 
jects dying of hunger on their very door sills, to make long prayers in the market 
place for the sufierin; s of the negro, who never knows what hunger is. 

But if British philanthropy is resolved to look over and beyond their own homeless, 
unfed, ragged millions, and expend its unsought sympathy on other nations, it is sug- 
gested to Mr. Clarkson, with all due respect, to pursue the only course by which his 
end can be accomplished. His countrymen brought the negro here, let them take 
him away. They are in possession of the millions for which they sold him, let them 
use the money to buy them. They may purchase asany body else may purchase. 
They may carry their property where they please, as other owners do. But they 
hav» never done this. They have never released from slavery a single slave, by the 
only possible mode by which they can release him. It is far more agreeable to the 

5 stem by which they combine the pleasures of charity and gain, to hold great meet- 
ings at Exeter Hall; td boast of English philanthropy and liberty; to issue circulars 

'full of self-complacency and sclf-gratulation, thanking that they are not as other men 
, and man-stealers — and to continue, with their hands in their breeches 
pockets, to jingle the very gold for which they sold the African savage, kidnapped by 
their ship-masters on the coast of Guinea. This negro trade has been invaluable to 
our English friends. It first filled their purses with an immense amount of money, 
and now it affords a capital, on which their traders in philanthrophy, as Coleridge 
calls them, carry on a large and profitable business. Being no longer able to coin 
money out of slavery, they now turn it to another account, and make it a reputation- 
tor-humanity fund. They manage to earn a character for hating slavery out of the 
very plantations in America, which they themselves stocked with slaves. They 
ire, from the same quarter, at the same time, to obtain credit for benevolence, 
and cotton for their Manchester trade. They are like their Bishop of London, who 
declaims, before the House of Lords, on the debaucheries ot the age, and rents out the 
very stews in which they flourish; securing a subject for his moral lecture on licen- 
tiousness, by providing tenements for those who indulge in it. They resemble then- 
own beau idea! of a fine gentleman — George the IV. — who drove his wife into im- 
prudencies by his brutality and neglect, and persecuted her to death for having fallen 
into them; — or, one of the fashionable Whartons of the London Clubs, who seduces a 
woman, and then upbraids her with a want of virtue. The case is even worse, as 
violation is worse than seduction, for John Bull forced the colonics to do, what he now 
abuses them for having done. 

Tins knack in our old friend, of reconciling the propensities first for getting money, 
and next for making rhetorical flourishes about his benevolence, is not confined to 
American slavery. It is quite as conspicuous, and amusing in other matters — for 
•sample, in his East India affairs. 



Slavery in the South. 

For many years the gold and jewels of Hindostan continued to flow into England 
xvhhoutlterJuption. During half a century, not a ship arrived from Ca cntta , wh eta 
did not brin* with it some nabob returning with his chests of gold and diamonds, the 
Pundered treasure of Begums and Rajahs, hoarded from generation to genera ion, 
for centuries. When Clive was accused of rapacity, he burst into an exclamation, 
that so ar from being guilty, he looked back with astonishment at bs own «>d«*£ 
when he remembered how he walked in the treasury of Moorshedabad between 
heaps of gold and precious stones, his will being the only limit to his power Cine 
had few equals. There were not many of the Company's servants who left them- 
selves, under similar circumstances, the same cause tor astonishment Pe ™ ^"- 
ters who went to India with small salaries, in a few years returned, to buy manors sur- 
pass the aristocracy in profusion and ostentation, and r.va princes in the rex p. e nc hture 
1 But whilst the whole nation were eagerly rushing to this harvest of 'Wane pearl 
and gold," they got up, to balance the account, the most magnificent indignat.oir- 
meeting that t/e world has ever seen. Hastings the Governor-General of India 
was arraigned in Westminster Hall. Ladies, and Lorus, and ^"?J^; 1 ™ 
England possessed of beauty, and talent, and noble birth-were assembled, day after 
day! to hear the denunciations of an eloquence never surpassed, perhaps neve, 
equalled-to listen, with wonder, to the vehement logic of Fox the spark bngdeda. 
mafion of Sheridan, the gorgeous imagination of Burke, luxuriating m kindred themes 
"Eastern character and scenery. The effect on the female audience was terrific- 
one fainted, another was carried out in hystencs But t.me P«»ed °n; the adl es 
became weary, or found something more attractive in the opera, or the play, the 
counsel flawed; every thing grew Tired but the hatred of Francs, and the ardour of 
See; th«Ttrial closed, and The enemy of Cheyte Sing and Nunconiar^ retured from 
the bar of the Senate to purchase an estate, and enjoy a pension We .are not to 
suppose that, during all this time, there was one rupee less taken from the £™M 
Ind an. The grand-nationaUympathy-meeting vindicated the British charactci for 
humanity, and the Company's servants took care to gratify the naUonal passion for 
weakh One incident occurred, during the grand exhibition of benevolence and 
justice by the British Parliament, which sufficiently explains the nature of the show 
Mr. Martin, an honest country member, very deeply affected by the eloquent account 
of tie wrongs done to the Indian Princesses, got up and declared m his s.mpl.cnv 
that if any member would move to restore the treasures of which the Pnncesse ; 
been plundered, he would second the motion. He looked round for support, but 
not a voice was heard; not a man wa« found to make the mot.on, and the honest 
Countryman discovered that restoration of the stolen property wa* , not the pohey ot 
the receivers of stolen goods, however eloquent they may be in denouncmg the 

lh Tne East India company have shown a very happy conformity to the national 
character, in their transactions of commerce and conquest "always says a an- 
guished English writer, "protesting against adding a foot o their te rrtory and de- 
nouncing the policy which extended it, while they quietly take P^^'J^* 
murmur, of the gains thus acquired; at once relieving their conscience bv the protest, 
and replenishing their purses by the spoil.' * m9m|pr • . • h 

The war in China furnishes another happy exemplification of ^manuer n wh en 
the British combine the love of gain, and a benevolen regard to £ »W™£ f 
their neighbors. They waged war on the poor Celestials, ba tared doi heir i m , 
stormed their towns, butchered the almost unresisting people ^ f e ^ n and 
conquest, or commerce only, but for the advancement of he ^"^■"^Vj™ 
Amelioration of the Chinese moral and religious character Theyfo ugh tat 
once for the extension of trade, and of true religion, and made converts with the 
same zeal to the use of Opium, and the New Testament. 

There can be no doubt that the business part ot the ransact, on was a far r on£ 
because it has been justified by the casuist ot Qu.ncy, who Ibmks rt Jo.n to *L g 
a delinquent negro with a lash, but very commendable to poison the Chinese 



*Bn)Gghrrri. 



6 Slavery in the South. 

opium. The Hong Kong Gazette announces that the trade has fully succeeded; thai 
opium is now eaten by the Celestials without opposition, or enqui ry, on the part of 
their government; and the London papers announce the arrival of the last two mil- 
lions of sycee silver. Whether the philanthropic part, of the undertaking is equally 
successful, we are not yet informed. 

This amiable and benevolent desire to promote the happiness of the whole human 
race, so conspicuously exhibited in the censure of slavery, the conquest of India, and 
the improvement of China, has alone induced th^ people of England to appropriate 
to themselves endless possessions in all parts of the globe. In addition to India, with 
its hundred millions, they possess New-Holland, and the Cape of Good Hope, and 
Gibralter, and Canada, and parts of South America and Africa, and countless islands 
in every ocean and sea. This certainly, to a careless observer, seems to indicate a 
grasping and greedy spirit in the English people, but then, per contra, to demonstrate 
their moderation, they show a most laudable zeal for the independence of Texas, and 
denounce the rapacity of the United States in seeking, or desiring its annexation. 
They exhibit an equal zeal to save Oregon from the ambition of America, and are 
even willing to take it themselves, worthless as they say the country is, rather than 
see it fall into the hands of the unprincipled republicans. In this way England recon- 
ciles, to her own satisfaction, the passion for acquisition, and the profession of moder- 
ation, and is at once most insatiable in her own acquisitions, and most censorious on 
those of other nations. One of her writers is now recommending the seizure of 
Egypt. If she takes it, the occupation will be accompanied with endless declarations, 
that it is intended for the benefit of the world in general, and for the religious, moral, 
and civil improvement of the Egyptians in particular, and for no other purpose. Wo 
are told of a Benedictine who boasted or confessed, that his vow of poverty had se- 
cured to him an income of 100,000 crowns, his vow of humility had clothed him with 
princely dignities, and his vow of chastity had produced effects equally surprising and 
agreeable. The English professions of generosity, magnanimity, and moderation, 
have led to consequences quite as singular, unexpected, and edifying. 

We hare been puzzled to understand how it is, that England should be not only 
blameless, but proiseworthy, in seizing upon [ndia with one hundred millions of in- 
habitants, and that Ameri'-a should be unprincipled and ambitious, in adding certain 
vacant territory to her possessions, The fact must be so, for all England affirms it 
to be so. It is perhaps the only point on which the English and Irish agree, and 
about which Mr. O'Connell does not pronounce the Premier a dealpr in falsehoods. 
It is true, that there are some differences in our proceedings and theirs. We appro- 
priate a country by purchase, they by conquest; we with the consent of the inhabi- 
tants, they without it; we deal in resolutions, conventions, constitutions, they in flying 
artillery, and sharp pointed bayonets; we annex a few thousand new citizens, and 
many acres of revenueless conntry, they millions of new subjects, and countless lacs 
of contributions. It must be these differences that make the objection to us. Our 
mode of acquisition is not that which is recognized in monarchical and aristocratic 
Europe, and, therefore, not the legitimate mode. We presume to differ with Kings, 
in obtaining increase of territory by peaceable means, and not by gldrious war, and 
are therefore unprincipled republicans — uninstructed in the true royal doctrines, which 
direct acquisitions of territory to be made by violence only, and justify such acts even 
as the attack on Denmark, provided it be attended with a sufficient destruction of 
human life. Tested by these royal maxims, the annexation of Ireland was 
originally a wise and just measure, and ought to be adhered to, because it was ac- 
complished in spite of the Irish, and with an abundant shedding of Irish blood; but 
the annexation of Texas is an act of unprincipled ambition and rapacity, because it 
was done with the consent of every Texan man, woman, and child— an'independent 
people by the admission and recognition of England and France. It arises, no doubt, 
from this legitimate mode of annexation applied by England to Ireland, that there 
exists between the two countries a love and esteem so cordial, as to excite universal 
admiration- No two nations in the world, neither Italians and Germans, nor Turks 
and Greeks, nor Russians and Poles— another example of the royal mode of annexa- 
tion— feel for each other so much affectionate solicitude, or dwell together like breth- 



Slaoery in the South. 7 

ren, in such perfect unity. We are content, however, with our plain republican way 
of doing these things; and imitating, as we do, our worthy progenitor, in the deter, 
mined spirit for making acquisitions, we prefer onr American mode by purchase, and 
consent of parties, to the Irish plan of England. 

There is no hypocrisy in all thi.v assumption of humanity and disinterestedness, by 
the British people. The Englishman really persuades himself that he makes war for 
the advantage of every body but himself; that he conquers Hindostan to rescue the 
Indians from despotism, storms Canton for the comfort of Counsellor Lin, and .seizes 
upon countless islands and countries, to give lessons of moderation and disinterested, 
nessto the whole family of mankind. There is nothing so monstrous that an En- 
glishman is not ready to believe it, if it be Mattering to the pride of England. On 
this subject his self-deception is without limit; all contradiction, inconsistency, or 
absurdity is overlooked, or never seen, if the statement be in praise of English cour- 
age, good faith, or humanity. In a work lately published— the Crescent and the 
Cross— Mr. Elliott Warburton very gravely tells us that England, alone, carried on 
war for twenty years on the whole world, for that world's liberty. But no. he adds, 
she was not alone — she had one ally in this struggle for religion and freedom. In the 
great battle for the christian faith, and civil liberty, the Turk— the successor of the 
Mahomets and \muraths — the representative of the bowstring and Koran— made 
common cause with English bayonets and Bibles, to defend the freedom and faith of 
the infidel dogs, whose father's graves the Moslem are accustomed to defile. This 
was indeed a miracle of English diplomacy; and it may certainly be admitted, that 
the defence of religion and the civil liberty of the whole world, was quite as much the 
real object of the Turk, as of the Englishman. 

The same writer delights in denouncing the French atrocities in Egypt, and else- 
where. No tale on this subject is incredible to him. In a few pagel after, he de- 
scribes an inundation produced by the British army having cut the great dam separa- • 
ting the salt-water lake Maadee from lake Mareotis, by which fifty Arab villages were 
swept away, and a country fertile until visited by its English allies, was converted 
into a swamp. The author adds, that xMehemet Ali intends to drain the lake, and to 
lestore it to cultivation; but, he cooly remarks, "many years will Le required to repair 
the ruin which a few hours were sufficient to effect." If this had been done by the 
French brigands, we should never hear the last o' it. But, it being an exploit of 
British troops, there are, without doubt, forty excellent reasons why they should do il, 
—one perhaps being, that they went to Egypt to defend and protect the inhabitants 
from tho horrors of French domination. 

This gentle and considerate mode of dealing with the lives and property of their 
allies by a British army, so sensibly felt by their Turkish or Egyptian friends, was 
shown even more emphatically to the Spaniards, during the Peninsular War. The 
inhabitants of St. Sebastian, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajos, filled Europe with com- 
plaints of the rapine, house-burning, rape, and murder, consequent upon the storming 
of those places by the British troops, and Napier admits their complaint to be well 
founded. But what then? — is it reasonable to require soldiers to discriminate so 
nicely, as to distinguish between a friend's city held against his consent by an enemy, 
and a city of the enemy himself, or to consider them, when taken bv storm, as enti- 
tied to any difference of treatment? Besides this, was not the army of Engiand doing 
battle for the civil liberty and the religion of the whole world, and surely they are 
not to be judged by the common standard of humanity and morals, which may be 
supposed to regulate a more ordinary warfare. 

If, however, after all, any man should be so unreasonable and impracticable, at to 
entertain doubts respecting the benevolence and philanthropy of the British nation, 
and to be dissatisfied with the evidence in their favor, exhibited so forcibly by the 
anti-slavery doings of the great English traders in negroes — by their impeaching the 
plunderer, Hastings, but refusing to restore the stolen goods — by their forcing the 
trade in opium on the Chinese at the point of the bayonet, to give the tea-drinhing 
Celestials another agreeable stimulant, and so improve their moral and religious 
character; by their peculiar mode of dealing with the dykes and cities of their allies, 
when under the protection of a British force — we would refer any such unbeliever 



8 £$avery'in the South. 

to the domestic history of Great Britain, as proving conclusively the humanity of her 
people. Let him advert to their punishments, amusements, and civil wars — the three 
great tests of the temper and disposition of a nation — and he can no longer (ail to 
acknowledge the gentleness of the national character. Take their punishments for 
example,— chopping oft* heads with axes; dismembering the dead body of the crimi- 
nal; sticking up the limbs over gateways; gibbeting in chains; killing by law for the 
theft ofa shilling; imprisoning and starving for debt; transporting for shooting a hare: 
or their amusements, so particularly humane — seeing men beat each other to mum- 
ies; bull-baiting; dog-worrying; cock-fighting, where the death of the bird is ensured 
by steel weapons; tearing foxes to pieces with hounds; steeple-chasing, where the poor 
horse is often killed, to say nothing of the benevolent gentleman who rides him; and 
the love of coarse practical jokes, which the taste and delicacy of Marryatt so delight 
in describing: or their civil conflict:.; — so marked by forbearance ami humanity — from 
the war of the roses, to Cromwell's gentle dealing with the royalist Catholics, or 
Lauderdale's tender mercies to the rebel Scotch Presbyterian, or North's Indian allies 
in our own revolution, the employment of whom Lord Chatham so strangely thought 
a disgrace to the ancestry of British soldiers and nobles. 

To these excellencies of the English character, so prominently exhibited in their 
disinterested wars and acquisitions for the good of mankind, there may be added an 
amiable passion for libelling their neighbors. For many centuries the French en- 
joyed a Benjamin's portion of the good things that flow from the insular spleen. 
The frog-eating, wooden shoed, attenuated Gaul, was a standing dish for the fun of 
the pursy Saxon. Even the Gallic courage was held cheap, and it became a test of 
British patriotism to believe, that one Englishman could whip three Frenchmen. 
The subjects of the Grand Monarque bore the incessant barking of their neighbor 
with great equanimity, and politely ascribed his ill nature to his climate, as Rosseau 
laid his own insanity when in England on the "elimat D'Angleterre." They thought 
it not surprising that men, who were always hanging themselves, should be always 
abusing other people. 

But for some years past, the United States appear to have become the favored na- 
tion. We have utterly eclipsed the French in sharing the civilities of the English 
press and people. Their favorite topic now is, the unprincipled, irreligious, profli- 
gate, spitting, tobacco chewing, julip drinking, drawling, lounging, unmannerly 
American. They roll the subject, like a sweet morsel, under their tongues. They 
have an affection for it. They place it in all kinds of lights. ' It assumes the shape 
of travels in this country. It makes a favorite article in the reviews. It enlivens a 
leader in the Times or Chronicle. It gives poignancy to a speech in Parliament. 
It is the staple of the Exeter love meetings, and helps out the scurrility of the corn 
Exchange. They are never weary of it. Ah, if they could only, really, and in truth, 
bring themselves to believe in their sayings — if they could but persuade themselves 
to have faith in their own invectives — to credit their own assertion, that America has 
neither men, nor money, nor intelligence, nor power; what comfort it would be to 
our English kin, how calmly and contentedly they would dream over a future of 
undisputed dominion on every shore. But unfortunately for their happiness, they do 
not believe one word of the speculations of traveller, reviewer, orator or editor. 
They have no genuine faith in tl.e speedy downfall of the Great Republic, whose 
existence "witlf fear of change perplexes trioharchs." They know that their abuse 
and misrepresentations are all fudge, and they are the more exasperated for knowing 
it. They feel, that all their invective notwithstanding, America will go on in her 
gigantic race, growing every day in population, wealth and power. They predict 
the speedy dissolution of her government, and have done so for fifty years, but are 
the most unfortunate of all prophets. They neither believe themselves, nor are 
believed in by others. It is very much to be lamented. We pity the unhappy pa- 
tient, but know no remedy, unless it be a course of anti-bilious medicines, and absti- 
nence from pen and ink. But if his convalescence depends on the stopping, or 
retarding America in her advanco to a power, which will defy all attacks or interfe- 
rence, the case is hopeless. 

One of the most prominent points in the abuse of tho Americans at present is their 



Slaveiy in the South. 9 

ferocious, lhis is all very weii, wt.ii f j scurrilous Bcrib- 

repudiate. Let them be roasted by the Quarterly, o Dy any o 
bters, who, like Dickens and Marryatt, may be paying ofi old &e res b > libel on^ tn 
United States. But it would be as well for the good people of England to en ark, 

delay to pay their debts, and one which deliberately contracts a deb which renders 
Sate insolvency inevftahle,-that whatever frauds may at present flour s . ooeithjj 
s de of the Atlantic, they are only humble imitations of one to winch England has had 
Uu. bono r to , h-e birth-the South-sea bubble, "that tremendous hoax," as Lamb 
a I "vlose extent the petty speculators of our day look back upon with he same 
expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would be 
co mo the puny face of modern conspiracy, contemplating the I itan size of Aaux . 
ZerhunJn plot;»*-or of another-the suspension of specie payments m H 97- 
XnZ pound note sunk to the value of fourteen shillings, and Parliament enacted 
riurttt should be regarded as worth twenty, "a gross and revolting absurdity, says 
Lo^Brm^u^araUeledin the history of deliberate bodies." The conse- 
mu nee of this was, that "the havoc which the depreciation made m the dealings of 
men was i calculable. Those who had lent their money when the currency was at 
rTiVcomp bed t' receive the depreciated money in payments, and thus loose 
fhTrt> or forty per cent of their capital. Those who had let land or houses at a lease 
must teki so much less rent than they had stipulated to receive Above all, those 
wo had lent their money to the Government, were obliged to take wo4h.rds only 
of the interest for which they had bargained, or were liable to be paid off with two- 
thirds of the principal."! And this continued for twenty years to be the condition of 
England so immaculate for honesty. . „f,u 

Indeed at the present moment, the frauds perpetrated under the influence of the 
existing rail-road mania, are superior to any that we can pretend to produce, and 
prove conclusively that we are very humble imitators of Eng lish «^2d*^ 
bubble will burst to the ruin of thousands, and English morality will sit amidst the 
wreck of their fortunes, and declaim on the cupidity of other nations. 

In the face of all this, it is quite ludicrous to see the grave charges brought agans 
America for her exceeding love of the "almigktp dollar," implying, as the, do that 
The accusers are quite superior to the weakness of attaching any undue value to an 
object so gross. Why, truely, there never existed a nation where the love of money 
o?therag g e to obtain it, has been more ungovernable than in England-and I with 
reason tot, for what is an Englishman, in England without money? He looses 
caste. He flies his country. He lives an exile in Belgium- I taly, F ranee, Germany, 
any where but at home, where his diminished purse would expose him to unendurable 
scorn from his former equals. What will not gold buy or do, n England? For what 
but the love of it. do the landholders insist on their monopoly o coming money out of 
the stomachs of the people? In what other region of the g obe ^ ^±>^ 
dollar secure larger indulgence," to -Ward, to Waters, Chartres, or the Deul? As 
Tus it t the standing complaint of English travellers in th.s country, that even the 
porr privilege of kicking the waiter, and bullying the landlord, is denied in America, 
o the possessor of thatmighty talisman, which, in England numbers these enjoy 
ments among the least of its° gifts. It fe one of the points of inferiority in America 
hat in this country, the traveller is obliged to be civil to the tavern keeper, and hat 
a full purse confers no right to be insolent or rude even to the coachman of a stage 



coach. 



10 Slavery in the South. 

But we must apologize for this digression on the eccentricities of our English 
neighbors — his eagerness one day for making the negro a slave, the next for making 
him free,— his pocketing the spoils, and impeaching the spoilers,— his carrying 
civilization and religion into foreign lands, by presenting the bible with one hand, 
and opium with the other. It has proceeded from no want of respect or veneration 
for our kinsman — quite, the reverse. We have for him all the indulgence of a true 
afleciion. and admit that he labors under a sort of idiosyncracy — that the habit of 
praising himself and abusing others, is what he cannot help — that it is one of his lux- 
uries besides, and it would be as reasonable to expect him to abandon his roast beef, 
and plum pudding, and pot of London porter — tliat concentration of all the purities of 
the Thames — as to forego his favorite enjoyment of libelling his neighbors. We 
will leave him then to carry on the trade in negroes, on the Eastern shore of Africa, 
after the old fashion, and on the Western after the new — to make slaves on the one 
side, and apprentices on the other — while we follow Chancellor Harper and Gover- 
nor Hammond, in their inquiry into the merits of that slavery, which our English 
ancestors have established among us. 

The subject is one of great magnitude and importance. It presents many ques. 
tions — all of them interesting — as it is considered in reference to religion, to political 
economy, to the interests of the master, to those of the slave. Is slavery a sin — 
does it conflict with the will of God as revealed in the Old and New Testament? Is 
it the best system for society — for securing the greatest good to the greatest number? 
Is it in our own country the best system for the master — can he cultivate his lands to 
better advantage with other labor? Does it most conduce to the welfare of the slave 
in America — would not liberty be to him a nominal blessing, but a real and insup- 
portable curse? These are the most interesting points from which the subject may 
be regarded. 

Greatly the most important view of the subject is the religious one. For assured- 
ly if slavery be adjudged a sin, if it be condemned by the revealed willof God, then 
in Christendom in cannot continue to exist. It is the duty of every rran, making the 
laws of God the rule of his conduct, to use all practicable efforts to abolish whatever 
violates them. But it is on this ground, above all others, that the defender of slavery, 
as we find it among us, is unassailable. It may be asserted with confidence, that 
there is no fact in history, and no maxim in ethics better established by evidence or 
argument than the proposition, that slavery was recognized under the Jewish theo- 
cracy, and by the christian apostles, as a legitimate form of social life, and that being 
so recognized, it cannot be deemed a sin by those who take the holy writings, old 
and new, as the only revealed will of God, and standard of religious and moral duly. 
Slaves existed, under the divine government, among the Jewish people. The 
Scriptures distinctly set forth the rules by which they shall be made, by which they 
shall be governed, by which they shall be punished. They are described as bought 
for a price: as the property of their masters; as subject to his will; as beaten with 
stripes; as marked; as sold; as manumitted; as placed in every possible position, to 
which the condition of slavery is liable. Slavery then is recognized, permitted, regu- 
lated, enjoined, by the Old Testament; but that which is recognized, permitted, reg- 
ulated, enjoined, b> the divine law, cannot be sinful. To assert that it may be, would 
be maintaining a proposition quite as extravagant, as that two and two make five. 
Slavery then being so recognized, permitted, regulated and enjoined, can by no 
possibility be a sin. 

Again, when our Saviour taught, slaves where every were about him; he fre- 
quently makes allusion to their condition: he denounces every form of sin around 
him; he reproves Sadducee and Pharisee without scruple, but he uses no expression 
that can be tortured into a condemnation of slavery. 

The apostles were in the midst of slavery in its worst forms and abuses in Asia 
Minor, Greece, and Italy. It could not, therefore, elude their observation. They 
taught'the new converts to Christianity, not only the great truths of religion, and the 
rules of morals, but many minor observances incidental to their situation, many reg- 
ulations of behaviour, and even of dress becoming their new condition and profession, 
and rebuked any infringement of them with severity. If slavery were a sin, it could 
■ot therefore escape either their notice, or their condemnation. Far less would this 



Slavery in the SoutJi. 1 1 

be possible, if it were the heinous and devilish crime which Mr. Clarkson represents 
it to be. But there is not in the New Testament a single expression, which even 
insinuates a condemnation of .slavery. Either then slavery is not sin, or the Apostles 
not only winked at, but wilfully closed their eyes on iniquity of the vilest nature. 

Now this is so clear, plain, and conclusive, that to a mind capable of a candid and 
honest judgment, it is irresUfible. Accordingly every christian teacher since the 
apostolic age, from Chrysestom to Chalmers, who believes that there is meaning m 
language, or whose opinion is worth a groat, admits that neither the Old or New 
Testament, contains one word in condemnation of slavery or slaveholders. The 
great Greek father, commenting on a passage of St. Paul relating to slavery, U ives 
lull force to the doctrine of the Apostle in reference to its duties — draws no distinction 
bi tween his general principles and his particular precepts, as we shall see Dr. Way- 
land do,— drops no word against slavery, but advises the christian slave to continue 
in this station, considering his condition as one, of the many forms of social life to all 
which the blessings of gospel truth are alike dispensed. Chalmers admits fully, that 
slavery is not condemned by the Scriptures, and therefore is not a sin. 

But, there is a class of theological instructors, who use the bible not so much to 
discover truth, as to support previously conceived opinions. They ask, not what St. 
Paul teaches, but what there is in his teaching to confirm the opinions which them- 
selves entertain. It is Mr. Clarkson that plants, the Apostle only waters. It is Dr. 
Wayland who builds, Paul and Peter are used to supply materials merely, if they 
have any, for the work. The disposition to set aside the bible which is commonly 
imputed to the Church of Rome, may be more fairly ascribed to the class of which 
we speak. Roma is accused of substituting tradition for the Scriptures, the nominal 
protestant postpones the gospel to his own system of ejhics. If the bible cannot be twist- 
ed to «o with the system, it is rejected with contempt and abhorrence. "If the religion 
of Christ, says Dr. Wayland. allows us to take such a license from such precepts as 
these, the New Testament would be the greatest curse that ever was inflicted on our 
race." Or, to apply the general remark to the particular case, "if the religion of 
Christ allows masters to hold slaves — if it permits what Dr. Wayland condemns — 
the New Testament would be the greatest curse ever inflicted on mankind." Such 
sentences as these manfestly indicate the temper with which the abolitionists ap- 
proaches the Scripture argument. It is not one which seeks diligently and humbly 
to know what the bible teaches, with the resolution to submit to that teaching, what- 
ever it may be. It calls arrogantly and presumptuously on the divine writings to 
sustain the position of the abolitionist,' It searches them merely for weapons of offence 
against slavery, and if it be once driven to confess that they furnish none, it denounces 
the book as an imposture and a curse. 

The argument of the same parties speak this sentiment also, in a mode more 
covert, but equally plain. It sets up, as effectually, a standard of right and wrong, 
independent of the law and the gospal, and supplants the eternal word by some 
crotchety abstract notion of their own. If they do not repudiate the Scriptures in 
direct terms, they do so indirectly, by undermining their character and authority as 
the word of God. Take for example, the argument of the President, of Brown Uni- 
versity in refertmce to the Old Tesiamenf, in answer to Dr. Fuller. Dr. Wayland 
admits unreservedly that slavery existed in the Jewish nation during the theocracy — 
that it was not forbidden — that it was regulated by the divine law. Very well, says 
his opponent, then slavery is not a sin, because a sin is an offence against the re- 
vealed will of God, and you grant that slavery is not forbidden by the Old Testament. 
Not so fast rejoins the worthy President; I admit, it is true, that slavery is permited 
by the inspired word.of God, but I deny that what is permitted by that word is there- 
fore no sin. Dr. Fuller stands aghast at this, and with uplifted hands, asks his wor- 
thy brother of Brown how this can be. Nothing more easy, replies the moral phi- 
losopher — other acts are permitted by the Old Testament which are sins — as, for 
example, polygamy — and, consequently, it does not follow, because a thing is per- 
mitted by the divine will, that, therefore, it is not a sin. But, with all due respect to 
one so high in position as a christian teacher, another conclusion does follow from his 
position — that the Old Testament permits what is sinful — it follows that the Old Tes- 



12 Skiver y in the South. 

tament is not the won! of thai Go.'!, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, much 
less to permit it — it follows that Dp. Wayland must abandon his bible, or his argu- 
ment. The most inveterate infidel could not more effectually demolish the authority 
of the Scriptures, than by proving that they enjoin, or permit a sin. 

Thus, either by sentences like the above, or by arguments like the last quoted, the 
authority of the Old Testament, as the word of God, is annihilated to the mind of the 
abolitionist, and he comes to regard Mos< s as an ordinary lawgiver to be judged, 
with his code, by the unerring ethics of modern presidents of colleges, and professors 
of moral philosophy. Now, for our part, admitting, as we freely do, that the moral 
philosophy of the amiable head of Brown University, is a very respectable school 
book, and vastly superior to the other productions of a like nature, which inundate us 
from the New-England press, such as the various performances of Peter Parley — of 
fences, as they are, against the young, fully equal to that of the pedagogue of Falerii, 
and worthy of the same punishment — yet we are not prepared to abandon even Paley 
or Smith, or Hutchinson, for Dr. Wayland, and we cannot hesitate to take the Old 
Testament and slavery, in preference to the "Moral Science" and abolition. 

In a manner equally summary, and equally inconsistent with its character as the 
word of God, Dr. Wayland deals with the New Testament. He admits that it does 
not condemn slavery. He will not deny that it alludes to slavery as a form of social 
life — that it regulates the conduct of the slave as a member of the christian church. 
But, surely what the apostles suffered daily before their eyes without rebuke — what 
they prescribed rules for — what they therefore permitted, could not be a sin; an 
enormous sin, as the abolitionists consider it. 

The answer ofthe Clarkson school to this is a singular piece of protestant Jesuitism. 
True, they say, the apostles did nol condemn slavery in their preaching and conver- 
sation, but they established, in their writings, certain general principles, which would 
gradually destroy whatever was inconsistent with christian truth, and they left slavery 
to the operation of these principles. Now, however proper and necessary a reference 
to these general doctrines may be, as to abuses which might arise in after times, and 
of which the apostles knew nothing, who can believe that they were intended as a 
substitute for their direct condensation of wrong, and sin committed daily before their 
eyes? Is there any class afevil doers so high as to escape the censure of Christ and 
his apostles? The Saviour rebukes the wise and the great, the rich and the powerful, 
those who sat in Moses' seat. The Apostle Paul denounces idolatry in the midst of 
Athens and Rome. Is there any thing so minute in the misconduct of christians as 
to elude their notice? The apostle reproves a departure from propriety in the dress 
even of the disciples. But there is not a word of condemnation for the sin of slavery 
— that enormous wrong — that detestable crime. Why is this? It is easy of expla- 
nation. The apostle satisfied his conscience by propounding certain doctrines in his 
writings, which would in time undo the mischief which he himself was inevitably 
doing, by permitting, by countenancing an offence against God. It is not easy to 
see after this, with what propriety the apostle could ask the questions, — "thou that 
preachest a man shall not steal, dost thou steal" — "thou that ahhorrest idols, dost 
ihou commit sacrilege" — "thou that teachest another, leachest thou not thyself." 
He might have added — thou that teachest indirectly by general maxims that slavery 
is sin, dost thou sanction it directly by thy daily conversation and preaching. 

The assumptionthat the apostles would, or did abstain from censuring any existing 
vice by direct precepts, and contented themselves with turning it over to the opera- 
tion of their general principles, is just the reverse of the truth. They give us prin- 
ciples for cases, where they had no opportunity for giving precepts. For what are 
we now doing when we attempt to apply to any particular case the principles es- 
tablished by the apostles? We merely endeavor to djscover what their precepts would 
have been, if the case had existed in their own day. If slavery had never been 
known before, and now for the first time, in the progress of missionary labors, the 
christian preacher had discovered it in somo remote tribe or country, the question 
would naturally arise, whether it was bonsistent with the principles, the spirit, tem- 
per, and scope ofthe apostolic doctrine: or, in other words, whether the apostles, if 
now living, would approve or condemn this newly found form of social life. Bfct 



Slavery in the South. 1 3 

there is no room for such enquiries in relation to slavery, when it is admitted that the 
apostles know it, saw it, spoke about it. The only proper question then is, what did 
the apostles speak? Did they condemn it? Suppose that they saw it, and were silent 
about it. The silence of the apostles is not like the silence of other writers. It 
means something. In the case supposed it would mean that there was nothing worthy 
of condemnation. But they were not silent. They prescribed rules for the conduct 
of the slave; for the conduct of the master. Are we to believe that the apostles re- 
gulated a sin? — defined the mode in which it should ho indulged? Would not this 
be approuing it? Apply the reasoning to any other sin. Suppose the apostle had 
written to the Ephesians, giving certain directions as to the manner i" which they 
should offer sacrifice to the great goddess of their temple. Would it be enough to 
tell us that they had settled certain principles and truths respecting the existence and 
attributes of the Deity, which would in due time extinguish idolatry. But Dr. Way- 
land tells us, "we are not competent to decide upon the manner in which God can, 
or does teach." It is very possible, therefore, that the apostles may teach one thing 
by maxims, and another by the tolerance of their daily conversation; that their 
preaching may lean one way, and their general doctrines another; that their precepts 
and their principles do not agree; that the first were meant for their own times, and 
the last for all times after. 

We have sometimes heard irreverent wits talk of the difference between the say- 
ings and doings; the theory and practice; the life and preaching of the modern 
ministers and teachers of divine truth, but we never new the jest to be directed against 
the Apostle Paul. It remained for the President of Brown University to discover, that 
the frail bishops and pastors of our own times, may plead the example of the apostles, 
for the diversity between their principles and their conduct. We have not had the 
advantage of reading the "moral science," but we shall take the earliest opportunity 
of looking , for the chapter establishing the rules, by which the balance may be pre- 
served between a divines public teaching, and his private conversation; between his 
doctrines intended for the world at large, and the precepts which he reserves for his 
own domestic or social circle; between the right, and the expedient. 

But admit that the apostles belong to that class of christian instructors, whose 
preaching and whose principles are not always in accordance — that, on the subject 
of slavery, they have refused to rebuke an offence daiiy before their eyes, and have 
been content to entrust its removal to the influence of the general doctrines of Scrip- 
ture. By what authority does Dr. Wayland depart from the apostolic practice?-— 
why does he disregard St. Paul's example? — the supposed mode of teaching, as to 
slavery, indirectly by general principles, is what he considers God's mode of teaching; 
why does he pursue another? He admits that there is not one word in the New 
Testament condemning slavery; why are there so many pages in Dr. Wayland's 
writings? Whence this contrariety between the president and the apostle? We are 
assured, with all imaginable dogmatism, that slavery is a sin. Why is it.'— -have 
Christ or the aposdes said so? — no, but Mr. Tappan and Mr. Birney have. It is a 
wrong. Do the Scriptures condemn it? — no, but Dr. Wayland, President of Brown 
University does. It ought to be abolished. Does St. Paul teach this? — not a word 
like it, but Mr. Clarkson has issued his bulls to that effect, of a breed quite as formi- 
dable as those of Lord Peter in the tale of a tub. Will christians in their senses 
hesitate between St. Paul and Mr. Clarkson, or Dr. Wayland, or Mr. Birney? — 
certainly they will. The Northern Methodist Church, the Northern Baptist Church, 
all the dreamers of dreams, and seers of visions, and appealers to moral codes purer 
than that of the bible, turn their backs on St. Paul, and kick the Old and New Testa- 
ment into the kennel, as a curse. The continued existence of the christian religion, 
such professed friends as these notwithstanding, is, perhaps, the most striking evidence 
of its divine origin. If, as we have heard a friend remark, a fortress is assailed from 
without, and is undermined within by treacherous defenders, and still from the ram- 
parts the standard continues to fly year after year, who can resist the conviction, that 
a power more than human defends and protects its walls? 

The substance then of Dr, W'ayland's argument is this. It is true that slavery 
was permitted by the Old Testament, but that does not prove that slavery is no sin, 



I 14 Slavery hi the South. 

because other sins were permitted by the Old Testament. It is true that there is 
not a word in the New Testament condemning slavery, but that is because the apos- 
tles determined that the best mode of rebuking this sin, was to say nothing against it — 
to regulate t be mode in which it should be indulged — to leave it to the general spirit 
of Christianity to abolish the evil. It is not, Dr. Wayland adds, for man to ask why 
the apostles pursued this way of teaching in reference to slavery. It is enough that 
it is God's way. But in our day, the apostolic, or God's manner of teaching, is no 
longer the right one. The abolitionists — Mr. Clarkson, Dr. Wayland, — have 
changed all that. They have grown wiser than St. Paul, and have been blessed 
with a new revelation like the Mormon. The apostles said not a word in censure of 
slavery or slaveholders; the abolitionists rail at them like fishwomen — St. Paul regu- 
lates the duty of master to slave, and of slave, to master; Dr. Wayland denies that 
any such relation can properly exist — the apostle restores to the master the runaway 
slave, the abolitionists entice the slave to runaway — the first, directs the believing 
slave to continue in his condition, to be content, to regard himself and master as 
equally the servants of Christ, and equally bound by the duties of their several sta- 
tions; the last, counsels, discontent, hatred, disobedience, and revolt, — the one ad- 
dresses the owner of slaves as a beloved brother; the other reviles him as a miscre- 
ant. It is evident that we must choose between St. Paul and Dr. Wayland. It is 
not possible to serve two such masters. 

On this branch of the subject — the relation of slavery to religion — we cannot too 
highly commend the argument of Dr. Fuller. It is clear, acute, and unanswerable. 
His opponent, in attempting to reply, looses himself in a mist of metaphysical subtle- 
ties, like one of Homer's heroes, whose exploits were suddenly cut short by a fog. 
We hope that the worthy President of Brown, like the Greek hero, will have sense 
and piety enough to pray for l'ght, and not go on vainly to do battle in the dark. 

There are some little things that we could wish amended in Dr. Fuller's letters. 
Ho is a strong and skilful disputant, but a somewhat incautious one. We do not 
understand why slaver)- should not continue to be possible, when for four thousand 
years it has been actual, or why its continuance should not be desirable, when, as 
regards the black, it is a choice between servitude and extinction. We could wish 
too for a little prunimg of his excessive deff'erences and solicitudes for his reverend 
brother, and that he had been a little more chary of promoting untried books to the 
dignity ot classical standards. But we know the kindly humor from which this comes, 
and that he could not possibly break his worthy brother's head even sylogistically, 
without an affectionate solicitude to apply a plaster to the wound. We notice the 
slight defects, only because the letters are so excellent, as to make us desire to see 
hem without a fault. 

The Southern States then have nothing to apprehend in discussing the question of 
slavery, as connected with the religion of the bible. For those other religions, which 
vjrtnally repudiate the bible, whether they go by the name of Mormonism, or aboli- 
tionism", or assume the garb of some refined system of ethics, transcending the morals 
of the apostles, we have no concern. They will perish and come to naught, like a 
thousand fanatic; 1 ! follies which have gone before them. 
--- Slavery, in its relation to political economy, presents the next important question 
connected with it. Is it better for the whole community, including both master and 

slave the entire body politic, or State — that predial and domestic slavejy should, or 

should not, exist? Does it secure the greatest good to the greatest number? This is 
the question, as Chancellor Harper propounds it. He adds, 'let me not be understood 
as taking upon me to determine, that it is better that it should exist. God forbid that 
the responsibility of deciding such a question should be thrown on me, or my coun- 
trymen. But this I will say, and not without confidence, that it is in the power of no 
human intellect to establish the contrary proposition; — the proposition, that it is better 
it should not exist. This is probably known to but one Being, and is concealed from 
human sagacity." Chancellor Harper then goes into a clear, comprehensive, philo- 
sophical argument, which even an opponent, if he be an ingenuous one, must admire. 
Slavery, he says, has existed in all ages, and in almost all nations. It has been the 
instrument for the promotion of civilization exery where. In no country, have the 



Slaveiy in the South. 15 

arts or improvements of society flourished or advanced, but by the aid of slavery. 
The savage will not labor: War, the: chase, an indolent sensuality divide his life. 
This condition of society endures as long as the barbarian continues to put his prison- 
ers to death. When he ceases to amuse himself after a victory, by making riddles of 
his captives with arrows, or tearing their flesh with pincers, or dashing out their 
brains with a tomahawk, and discovers that he can make ihem contribute to his wants 
by preserving theit lives, then improvement comm°nces. The continuous, systema- 
tic, perseverving labor of the prisoner, converted into a slave, produces food, com- 
forts, conveniences, luxuries. The roaming savage becomes fixed. Agriculture 
advances; the arts appear, and are cultivated, and society gradually, but certainly, 
assumes the form of civilized life. This is the history of progress among all nations. 
Slavery is the instrument, the means, by which the barbarian reaches the advantages 
of civilization. In warm countries, it is impossib vhaps, after attaining them, 

to perpetuate them by any other other means. Conrq .sory labor is the only labor 
which can be sufficiently depended on, to counteract tne influ nee of a hot climate 
A tropical sun at once produces an indisposition to work, and supplies without it, all 
that is necessary for sustaining life. In severer climates where the danger of freez- 
ing, and starving, and the absolute necessity of sheiter, are sufficiently compulsory, 
without the help of a master's control, anew modification of social life arises, and a 
different condition of society is gradually established. Servitude takes the place of 
slavery. The hired laborer supersedes the Siave. But it is by no means certain, 
that this change is for the benefit of the last. 

In the progress of that state of society, to which we have just adverted, population 
increases; labor becomes superabundant. It is discovered that the work of the slave 
no longer pays for his support. The period comes when the master is willing to run 
away from his slaves, or, in other words, to manumit them, and get rid of feeding, 
clothing, and housing them. He perceives that he can hire the peasant for less than 
it co>ts him to maintain the slave, and therefore he manumits the slave. The freedom 
conferred on the serf in Europe a few centuries ago, was a concession, not to the 
serf, but to the master. It was a change for the benefit of capital, not of labor. It 
was intended to place the master, the proprietor, the capitalist, in a better condition 
than before. There was nothing in society, as then constituted in any nation of 
Europe, that could by any possibility have produced a concession to the peasant. 
Who was he? what was he? that a change, in the fundamental laws of any govern- 
ment, should be made for his advantage, or by his advice? The change was intended 
for the benefit of the lord — for the advantage of the master only, was the serf con- 
verted into the "masterless slave." When he was made a free man, he was driven 
from a condition which he himself had chosen as a refuge from freedom. Gibbon 
relates that, on the establishment of the feudal system in Europe, the poor, the feeble, 
the timid, sought admission among the bondsmen of the powerful lords. They were 
glad to transfer to another, that right of property in themselves, which the abolition- 
ists tell us cannot be alienated. When the nobles subsequently found them an in- 
cumbrance, they restored them to their previous condition — the condition of free 
laborers. Is that condition now, any better than it was, when the poor ran away 
from it, by enrolling themselves among the serfs of the nobles? In the increased and 
crowded population of Europe, is it easier for the laborer to win his bread by the 
sweat of his brow? Is it less difficult to procure clothes, lodgings, fuel? Island 
more easy of rent? Does not every day afford evidence of the continued desire of 
the landholder to get rid of the manumitted serf — to drive off the cotter from his es- 
tate, and free himself from the remains of the servile incumbrance left upon his hands? 
It is true that the violence of 'he middle ages, which drove the feeble and the poor 
into slavery, exists no longer, but want, destitution, misery, starvation, constitute a 
motive quite as irresistible — hunger is as powerful as the sword. The laborer lives 
by work, but he cannot obtain it. The complaint of thousands continually, is, that 
they are not ab'e to get employment. How happy would they be, to be always se- 
cure of it — to hold their employer bound never to dismiss his laborers, without finding 
for them auother employer — to enjoy one of the benefits conferred by the condition 



16 Slavery in the South. 

of the slave. He is always secure of employment, always, therefore, secure of sub- 
sistence. And lo this condition, only call it by another name, we cannot but think 
that thousands of European operatives would rejoice to be brought. 

Where, then, is the essential or important practical difference between the servi- 
tude of modern Europe, and American slavery? Except in the fancy of those, who 
compose new Eutopias, or imaginary Republics, a laboring class — a very large class 
who depend on daily labor for daily bread — must exist in every civilized state. In 
one country this laboring class is free, that is, he may seek his own master, and make 
his own contract. But want drives him to take the least possible wages that can 
sustain life. He is very often unable to obtain employment at all. Then he starves. 
!!.! sleeps under hedge To bo able to get into a barn upon straw is a luxury. 
His wife and children suffer with him. If he falls sick, they perish together. In 
ano'her country, the laborer is transferred by one employer to another — his contract 
is made for him. He is sure of employment, and therefore sure of subsistence. He 
never wanders about in pursuit of work. I !e has a fixed home, certain support, food, 
clothing, help when sick. "In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, in 
countries of free labor, the distress falls principally on the laborer. In those of slave 
labor, it falls almos exclusively on the employer. In the former, when a, business 
becomes unprofitable, the employer dismisses his laborers, or lowers their wages. 
But with the latter, it is the very period at which he is least able to dismiss his 
laborers; and if he would suffer a farther loss, he cannot reduce their wages."* If 
with the free laborer, there be better chances for the few of superior mind to improve 
their condition, with the slave there is greater certainty, for the mass, of security 
from want and starvation. There are compensations in either condition of society, 
which makes it not easy to determine which best secures the greatest happiness to 
the laboring poor. 

It is with good reason then, that Gov. Hammond affirms, "that slavery is an es- 
tablished and inevitable condition of human society." You may give it another name 
but the case of the laboring poor in countries of free labor, does not materially differ 
from that of the slave. The Marquis of Normandy, as quoted by Gov. Hammond, 
declares the English operatives "in effect slaves." They are more degraded phy- 
sically, and morally, than our slaves." To prove this, and show that it is not a 
rhetorical flourish only, a number of passages are quoted by Hammond, from the 
reports of the commissioners appointed by parliament to investigate the condition of 
the operatives. We refer to his letters for a few of the cases of suffering i ignorance, 
and brutal degradation, which abound throughout England, and will inflict but one or 
two upon the reader. "I wish," says a Commissioner, "to call the attention of the 
Board to the pits about Brampton. The seams are so thin that several of them have 
only two feet head. way, to all the working. They are worked altogether by boys 
from 8 lo 12 years of age, on all fours, with a dogbell and a chain. The passages 
neither ironed nor wooded, are oiten an inch or two thick with mud. In Mr. 
Barns' pit, these poor boys have to drag the barrows with one cui. of coal or slack GO 
times a day 60 yards, and the empty barrows back without once straightening their 
backs:' "Richard North, aged 16, went into the pit at 7— when he drew by the 
"irdle and chain his skin was broken, and the blood ran down." When they refused 
to draw they were beaten. In these pits, girls were at work, clad in nothing but 
their shifts, among naked men. In Liverpool, 40,000 persons live in cellars; in 
Manchester, 15,000. In England, 22,000 people dwell in barns, tents, and in the 
open air. According to Mr/O'Connell, there are now in Ireland alone 4,000,000 of 
paupers in rags without homes, '-living on potatoes when they can get them, and to 
whom a blanket, is an unknown luxury." D'israeli, in a work of fiction it is true, 
but one professing to give a picture less horrible than the facts would justify, abounds 
in details of misery that are almost incredible. We refer our readers to the work, 
and particularly to the biographical notice of Mr. Devilsdust, the foundling pauper. 

It is sufficiently evident from these accounts, that the condign of the English 

Harper's Memoir. 



Slavery m ilu South. XT 

operative is not superior to that of the American slave. We have no such destitution 
and misery in the United States. Our slaves are better fed, better clothed, and cer- 
tainly not more ignorant or immoral. We challenge comparison on this subject. 
Take for example the relative condition of the children of slave and operative. I he 
very worst feature in the case of the laboring poor of England, is the miserable state 
of the children of tender years, of both sexes, working, under exposures which set 
all decency at defiance, and harnessed literally to their work. The child 01 the 
slave, to the age of twelve or thirteen, is as happy as perfect exemption from work 
and care can make him. . 

There is this essential difference, too, in the case of the English operative, and the 
African slave. The one has been degraded, by the increasing hardships of his situa- 
tion, from a better condition; the other has been raised by slavery from a lower one— 
the worst features of English social life were not known two hundred years ago in 
England; Mr. Clarkson himself would hardly deny, that the African in America is a 
civilized and cultivated being, compared with the savage of the slave coast. 

In reference to this suffering and degrading class of operatives, Chancellor Harper 
says, "If some superior being would impose on the laboring poor of any country— 
this as their unalterable condition— you shall be saved from the torturing anxiety 
concerning your own future support, and that of your children, which now pursues 
you through life, and haunts you in death— you shall be under the necessity oi regu- 
lar and healthful, though not excessive labor— in return you shall have the ample 
supply of your natural wants— you may follow the instinct of nature in becoming pa- 
rents, without apprehending that this supply will fail yourselves, or your children— 
you shall be supported and relieved in sickness, and in old age, wear out the FeffiSi^ 1 
of existence among familiar scenes and associates, without being driven to beg, or to 
resort to the hard and miserable chanty of a workhouse — you shall of necessity be 
temperate, and shall have neither the temptation or opportunity to commit great 
crimes, or practise the more destructive vices — how inappreciable would the boon be 
thought." "Yet this is a very near approach to the condition of our slaves;"* 
and we confidently ask, whether the laboring millions of Great Britain would not 
joyfully accept a proposal from their landlords, permitting them to give their labor 
for life, to be ensured a dwelling, food, clothing, fire, and the support of their fami- 
lies at their death. What else is slavery but such an exchange? "May we not then 
say justly that we have less slavery, or more mitigated slavery than any other country 
in the civilized world. "-j- 

The misfortune with the theorists and speculators on the subject of slavery is, that 
they compare the condition of the slave not with the laboring poor of their own or 
other countries, but with some imaginary state of society, where there is no excessive 
labor, no severe privation, no want, starvation, or wretchedness. "But theorists 
cannot control nature and bend her to their views, "t and the class marked by pover- 
ty, and hard work, and want, will continue to the end of time among all nations. 
Whether this class be in a better condition as serfs, or free laborers, is a question, 
which Chancellor Harper says no human sagacity can fairly solve. 

To the several objections to slavery, made from various quarters, the writers to 
whom we have referred, give sound and satisfactory answers. It is said that the life 
of the slave is insecure. We challenge comparison, replies Chancellor Harper, and 
affirm, that with us there have been fewer murders of slaves, than of parents, chil- 
dren, apprentices, in societies where slavery does not exist. It is pretended that 
nations owning slaves are feeble in a military capacity, let us recur to the histories 
of Greece and° Rome for the answer. We are supposed to be exposed to internal 
dangers — to the risk of insurrection and violence to person and property. Compare 
the condition of the Southern with that of the Northern States, or Great Britain— with 
the riots of Massachusetts, where helpless women were burnt out of their convent 
home at midnight— the ruthless violence of a like nature in Philadelphia— the anti-rent 
disturbances in New-York, where law and order have been trampled under foot for 
two years, and the Governor and the judges talk mincingly of the hardships of the 

*Harp»r's Memoir. t Harper. t Hammond. 



IS Slavery m the South. 

ftnti-r«nter», who are obliged — poor innocents — to live on leased land, and not on fee 
simple estates, contrary to the genius of our institutions — or the infamous Mormon 
and anti- Mormon troubles, burnings, and murders which disgrace Illinois — or the 
disorders of Ireland, where one man at the head of the populace virtually governs, 
conflagrations and murders are perpetrated with impunity throughout the land, and 
I loks helplessly and hopelessly on — compare all this with the unbroken 
quiet of the Southern States. It is asserted that the slave is the object of oppression 
«ud tyranny. If a laborer in England steals a lamb, or entraps the game kept for 
the sport of his employers, he is imprisoned, or transported; if a slave with us robs 
his master of a sheep, he is punished with a few lashes; if he kills his game, he has 
an unlimited privilege to eat it. But the slave is whipped — subject to a degrading 
punishment. So also are the sailors and soldiers of England. Are they less sensi- 
tive than the slave? Is the lash administered with a gentler temper, or a weaker arm 
in the navy, or army? Shall the tar be brought to the gangway and the cat for his 
offences, and the slave go free? Is the boy, or apprentice, degraded in England by 
a whipping from his master? It is very idle to dispute about mere modes of punish- 
ment. All are evils — unavoidable eviis. Each nation selects that which is deemed 
most conducive to the end in view. Between whipping, imprisonment, transporta- 
tion, who can authoritatively decide? As to the severity with which the lash is 
applied, it may confidently be asserted that nothing, to which the slave is exposed, is 
at all comparable to the merciless inflictions to which English sailors and soldiers 
have been frequently condemnedi 

We have remarked that in his social, moral, and religious condition, the African 
is immeasurably improved since his transfer to America from his own country, and 
VmsVs'tlie true point of comparison. From an idolater, according to the most brutal 
farm* of the most stupid of all superstition, he has been converted into a worshipper 
of the true God. From an ignorant and idle barbarian, he has been changed into an 
industrious, orderly, quiet, and useful laborer. Have the philanthropists, false or 
true, done half as much for the African? Have they done any thing for him, but to 
make him discontented with a condition which is the best he ever knew — the only 
one in which he can ever improve — that of subjection to a superior and more intelli- 
gent race. Whether the system of education, which the African enjoys among us, 
may not be modified and made better; whether it may not be divested of some remains 
If colonial rudeness, is a question for those only to decide, to whose government 
Providence has entrusted him; but this is certain, it is the best which the negro race 
has ever yet been permitted to enjoy. 

In considering slavery as a question of political economy, we have so far regarded it, 
as it influences the well being of the slave only. We have not adverted to some of 
the consequences of the system of free labor on the situation of the employer or capi- 
talist. It has been said that the manumission of the slave in Europe was a concession 
to the lord, and not to the serf; that it relieved the master from the support of the 
slave, when the work of the last was no longer profitable. In other words; it was 
perceived by the dominant class, that free labor was cheaper than slave labor, and 
therefore the slave was made free. But to this gain on the part of the master, time 
has gradually attached certain counter-balancing evils, which may make it doubtful 
whether he has really reaped any material advantage from the change. A pauper 
class is the necessary consequence of a free labor class, and the poor soon become 
numerous and destitute. It is not quite possible in a christian country to see men 
starve in the streets of a great city, as in London for example, without some effort to 
aid them. But this must happen to the free laborer who has no work, and therefore 
no Vread,ifsome provision is not made for his support. A poor tax must be levied, 
work-houses must be built, and the expenses of managing them must be paid. 
Enormous sums of money are thus forced from the reluctant master. The number 
of paupers in Great Britain, by the census of 1841, was 3,522,000, to .-ay nothing of 
the partially destitute. The paupers of Ireland alone, according to Mr. O'Connell, 
are now 4,000,000. The poor tax of 1839 was £4,400,000— a sum nearly equal to 
the whole revenue of the United States. 

There is no part of the system of English society, about which their statesmen and 



&avery in the South. 19 

writers have so differed and disputed, as their poor laws. It is difficult to say whether 
they are most hateful to the tax-paying landholder, or the alms-suppoited p 
whether the rate-receiver, or the poor-house comm.8s.oner, be the most ^tested cb- 
ject; whether the beadle, or charity boy-Mr. Bumble, or Oliver i wist— be 
happiest illustration of the blessings of the system. n W e ther 

It would see.n then, that the great proprietors and capitalist have no a toge her 
escaped the burthen of supporting the old, the s,ck, and the infirm ^^th" 
however reluctant, they are still compelled tocontnbute to tins purpose. Tney do.o 
in a wav more onerous to themselves, and less acceptable to the laboring poor. It 
may be well doubted whether, if the poor-laws and poor-rat es had been fo.esetn 
the landholders of England would have been so ready to exchange the dear labor ot 
the serf for the cheap labor of the freeman. 

When to this continued and increasing evil is added the danger to which prj 
is exposed from the despair of the starving laborer, it is very questional,! 
the European master has improved his own condition by the manumission 
It has been shown that to the serf himself, the change has been no sure blessing, 
a general question then, of political economy, or civil government, it is by i 
certain whether slavery, or free labor, be the most useful element in civil aocu 

Such is the view sketched concisely and imperfectly from the writings a ; the .head 
of our article, of slavery as one of the conditions of civilized society— on, ol t e 
classes, or castes, into which the population of a great nation must be neec sanly 
distributed. You may call the mass of poor laborers what you will, but ^ 
and suffering, and hard labor will be the attendants on poverty, rheio are 
evils accompanying the condition of the free laborer, there are; u Jar to hat 

of the slave; which may predominate, as a general question it is not eas> -tojwciae^ 
But whatever may be the truth in reference to the laborers of other countries, \ 
there is no broad or marked line of discrimination between the rich and the poor, 
except what wealth or want may create, a new element enters into the en' 
advantages and evils incident to the several conditions of slavery, or iree labor, 
the question refers, as it does with us, to two distinct, heterogeneous races who can 
never unite. If the two races so brought together are whites an . blacks, the 
will not endure the union— the happiness of the African is best secured m boi 
under the superior race. It is in this condition only, that he can enjoy or partake 
the advantages of a high state of civilization. # • 

The -ecxro never originated a civilization of his own. In Africa he is found a I 
and every where, in a state of the rudest barbarism. In our own 
France has enabled him to prove, that after having been trained to i 
efficient industry and improvement, he relapses, when left to himself, into i; 
savageism; and England is trying a series of experiments, to enable h.m to es 
the same truth in her West India Islands. If then he is ever to enjoy the advar, 
physical, moral, and religious, of a highly civilized society, it must be in p 
connection with a race superior to his own. * 

But with such a race he cannot hop^ to live as an equal. Pie never did from 
beginning of the world. He never can. The nonsense of the abolitionists about 
amalgamation is as stupid as it is nauseous. It violates the common 
nature. Mr.Tappan himself would shun a negro son-in-law, and Mr. Ah 
avoid the odo rs of an African spouse. The most careless observer i will be 

continually struck at the difficulty with which different tribes, or nations, mix and 
combine, even when they approach to physical and intellectual equably, 
they still talk of the Norman, and Saxon, and Celt. But where one race is decided y 
an inferior one, greatly an inferior one— a race of slaves in all ages— never reach- 
ina to a high condition of moral, or intellectual culture; always ig always 

savage; in the eye of the white, disgusting from color and features; to ta 
ture, is to exhibit an ignorance of our nature, worse than that oi tl 
clodhopper, who selects his sheep and his swine from superior breeds. lne . 
indeed of the ranters foabol it ion , is one of the aggravating points of the 
to which they subject us. It would be an almost ludicrous death to b » bray* out at 
existence by a chorus of donkies. 



20 Slavery in the South. 

But if the African cannot live on equal terms with the white race, or unite with it, 
ha is reduced to one of two conditions. He becomes either the slave of the State — 
like the Helots of Sparta, or the Hindoo cultivator of Company lands — or of individ- 
uals, as in the United States. No. one who has thought on the subject for a moment, 
can doubt which of these two is the better condition. A candid comparison will show, 
that the situation of the American slave is not only preferable to that of the State 
slave, but that it is not worse than the condition of the Irish, or English laborer, and 
lias indeed fewer wants, cares, and sufferings. 

This then is the case of the Southern States. The negro has been brought among 
us by no act of our own. If he remains with us, it must be in the relation of slaves 
to a master. It is the only relation consistent with our well being, and most condu- 
cive to his. It is the social arrangement, which alone can secure the happiness of 
while and biack, so long as they continue to be dwellers in the same land. It is the 
only system which, with us, provides the greatest good to the greatest number. 

Leaving the general question of slavery, let us consider the subject in our own 
immediate case, and first in reference to the master's interest. The amount of ex- 
penditure for Lhe support of paupers, has been stated to be one of the evils attendant 
on the system office labor, and as going far to neutralize the advantages enjoyed by 
th6 employer under that system. We must return to this view of the subject, when 
wc examine the question in relation to the benefit derived from it by the master in our 
own country. It is admitted that slave labor is dear labor — that the compensation 
made indirectly to the slave is substantially greater than that made directly to the 
free laborer. It might seem then that it would be to the advantage of the master, in 
the Southern States, to exchange one kind of labor for the other. 

The first objection in the way, is that which is common to all similar cases in all 
Pauperism, as we have said, is the necessary attendant on free labor. It 
was not known in England until the abolition of villeinage. The one springs natu- 
rally from the other. If there be no obligation on the laborer to work for any one, 
neither can there be an obligation on any one person to support the laborer in sick- 
ness, infancy, or old age. The burthen of his support must then fall on the commu- 
nity, and be provided for by the law. Hence the poor- laws and poor-house. In 
States, the law interferes only to compel the master to take care of the slave. 
It goes no farther, but this it requires. Where slavery is the established system of 
labor therefore, there can be no pauper class of laborers. 

The first evil then which would result to the master from the conversion of the 
negro into a free laborer, would be the support of an immense mass of black paupers. 
The proportion of poor among them would be vastly greater than among the same 
number of whites, from the indolent and unthrifty habits of the blacks. The amount 
saved to the masters, or employers, by the superior cheapness of free labor, would 
be expended on the support of this new class of paupers. 

But a still greater difficulty to the master in any exchange of slave for free labor is, 
that in truth he has no ehoice — it is slave labor with h.m, or none. If the British 
experiment in Jamaica proves nothing else, it establishes this fact, that the manumit- 
ted negro will not work. We have no Coolies to enlist, nor is it at all probable that 
we ehould be either willing, or able, to carry on a quasi slave trade with Africa by 
bringing over negroes nominally hired, or by making apprentices, for twenty years, 
from the crews of captured slave ships. Much of the Southern country is too un- 
healthy for white labor. The manumissionof the blacks would therefore deprive the 
master of all labor, and restore a large portion of the North American continent to 
its primitive condition of swamp and forest. N w we of the Anglo-Saxon race, who 
claim this part of the continent as our heritage, and who intend, with God's help, to 
transmit it to our children, have no intention to see established among us this enor- 
m »us system of pauperism and destitution, nor are we at all willing to have our fields 
restored to their former wildness, by changing the present efficient laboring slave into 
an idle and dissolute freeman — and this, for the purpose of enabling certain empirics 
in transcendental morals, and certain charitable gentlemen who are willing to do 
alms at another's expense, to try an experiment on the capabilities of the African race 
for self-government and civilization, which all time has already tested and determin- 



Slavery in the South. 21 

ed. As the negro is an inhabitant of our country, we do not ask how, or by whose 
agency, he must occupy that position in society which, in our judgment, is the only 
one compatible with the happiness of the two races, who have thus been thrown to- 
gether. We will live with the negro race in no other relation than that of master 
and slave. As they have never been placed in any other condition in connection 
with a superior people, they shall hold no other with us. This is our fixed resolu- 
tion, and we will not be driven from it. The idle gossip of such men as Birney, and 
Tappan, and Cassius M. Clay — half madman, half simpleton — whether it takes the 
shape of falsehood, or false sentiment, or mere stupidity — the element in which they 
chiefly delight — is powerless against the settled feelings, resolves, interests, and in. 
stincts of a whole people. 

Nor is the factious and foolish agitation of these men less at variance with the best 
interests of the slave. For to the question — the last which we set out with proposing 
to examine — whether manumission would benefit the negro, the answer — no — is most 
clear, conclusive, and irrefutable. It would release him at once from the salutary 
authority and restraints which make him an industrious, well behaved, useful mem- 
ber of the community to which he belongs. It would deprive him of that social con- 
dition, which secures to him and his family, a home, food, clothing, fuel, and exemp- 
tion from the cares of ordinary life; places him under a rule more lenient greatly 
than that which consigns English laborers for the smallest offences', to the jail, the 
courts, the hulks, or pena! colonies,* where they are put to hard labor in chains, and 
under the lash; enables him to enjoy the blessings of true religion, of which in his 
own country he would have heard nothing; bestows on him the advantages of a civi- 
lization which he could never attain in any other way; and fixes hiifi in a state of 
more uninterrupted safety from want or violence, than is known to any other negro 
in the world. 

Great however as the benefits are, which we have enumerated as resulting from 
slavery to the African, and of which the abolition of slavery would deprive him, thev 
areas nothing in the estimate, compared with one overwhelming evil, which would 
be the necessary consequence of manumission. It is certain as any thing human 
can be, that the abolition of slavery would be followed by the extinction of the black 
race. They who seek to make them free, seek their destruction. .We who contend 
for their continuance in slavery, are protecting not their well being only, but their 
existence. 

If after the abolition of slavery, peace continued to be preserved between the two 
colours, the blacks would waste away under the consequences of competition with a 
more intelligent race, from which slavery alone now protects them. They would 
become idle or mischievous, and gradually wear out. "The African (says Governor 
Hammond) loves change, novelty, sensual excitements of all kinds. Released from 
his present obligations, his first impulse would be to go somewhere. At first, they 
would all seek the towns, and lapidlv accumulate, in squalid masses, upon their out- 
skirts. Driven thence by the police, they would scatter in all directions. Some 
would wander to the free States, marking their tracks by their depredations. Many 
would roam wild in the woods or swamps. Few would be induced to labor, none to 
labor continuously. They would live by depredations on cattle, barns, and poultry 
yards. When this supply was exhausted, they would perish for want." 

Such being their character, and compelled, as they would be, to compete with the 
more active and energetic white race, they would be driven from every pursuit and 
occupation of social life. The poverty, want, disease, and starvation, to which their 
idle and improvident habits must lead, would annually decimate their numbers, We 
have often asked northern men, what had become of the blacks, — slaves formerly on 
their farms, — now enjoying the advantages of nominal freedom. The reply has ah 
ways been, they could not tell. The negroes had disappeared. They had been im- 
proved from slaves, into free operatives; from contented laborers in the country, to 
squalid paupers of the city; from the happy dependants of the white man, into equals 
with him, so far as a community of jaila, work-houses, or penitentiaries can confer 

• Wilkes' Voyage. 



22 Slavery in the South. 

equality. The consequences of manumission to the blacks, in driving them from em- 
ployment, and rapidly lessening their number, are so obvious as to arrest the attention 
of the transient observer. "The colored population (says Mr. Lyeli*) are protected 
against the free competition of l he white emigrants, with whom-, if they were once 
liberated, they could no longer successfully contend." "Experience has proved in 
the Northern States, that emancipation immediately checks the increase of the color- 
ed population, and causes tne relative number of whites to augment very rapidly." 
"Before the influx of while laborers, the coloured race will give way, and it will re- 
quire the watchful care of the philanthropist, whether in the North or South, to pre- 
vent them from being thrown out of employment, and reduced to destitution." A 
moments reflection however would convince Mr. Lyell, that no effort of philanthropy 
could overcome the influence of those causes — the leges legum of which, civil institu- 
tions are themselves the iiiere effects — by which the fate of the African race would be 
decided. We might deplore that fate, we could not change it. Has philanthropy 
changed or even retarded that of the Indian tribes of North America? 

But the disadvantage resulting to the manumitted black, from his marked inferiori- 
ty, and inabilty to engage in competition witii the white man in the ordinary pursuits 
of life, is a small evil, compared with the infinitely greater one which would perpetu- 
ally threaten him, of actual collision between the two colours. Various causes might 
lead to this — the depredation of the starving negro — the ambition of aspiring men of 
his own race, or unprincipled and reckless demagogues of the other, — hatred for sup- 
posed wrongs, — the discontent arising from real inferiority. If from these, or any 
other causes, a resort to arms between the two races should occur, then the sure and 
speedy destruction of the unhappy African must be the consequence. The abolition- 
ists, wjtJ> their characteristic stupidity and malignity, seem desirous to hasten the 
conflict, as they profess to augur victory to the object of their sympathy; but no man 
capable of thinking would for a moment be in doubt as to the result. 

At the settlement of this country, according to Catlin's calculation, there were 
6,000,000 of red men scattered over the Continent. There are now 1,400,000. 
They have disappeared before the indomitable race of Caucassian origin. But if (he 
red men of North America, numerous as they were — brave, persevering, resolute of 
purpose, and trained to the art of war, were unable to resist the steady, determined 
onset of the few, feeble, scattered colonies, spread out along a thousand miles of 
coast, what hope could there be for the sluggish, timid, unskilled African, in a con- 
ctst with these colonists — numerous, bold, energetic, and practised in arms, and 
stimulated to fierce indignation, by the circumstances of the conflict, and the nature 
of the foe? It would be a war of extermination to the black. Such is the conclu- 
sion of Lord Brougham. 

In illustrating the peculiarly amiable character of our English friend, and the amu- 
sing blunders into which his love of himself, and his hatred for his neighbors, some- 
times lead him, we omitted the most ludicrous example which has met our notice. 
Lord Sydenham, when Governor-general of Canada, wrote a series of letters to his 
colleagues at home. The letteis are libels on the Americans, after the approved 
English model. They are so deliglv fully abusive, that it never seems to have oc- 
curred to his friends, that they were also very silly. They have accordingly been 
published, and are religiously believed in by nine out of ten among their readers in 
England. We will give only one of die many pleasant passages which abound in the 
Sydenham correspondence, and which happens to be connected with our subject. 
The Americans, says this nobleman, are M iuch a set of braggadocios, that their 
public men must submit to the claims of their extravagant vanity." Then in another 
place, he says, "if they drive us into a war, the blacks in the South will soon settle all 
that pari of the Union; and in the North, I feel sure we can lick them to their heart's 
content." — a pleasant specimen this of the genuine John Bull — of what N. G. Willis 
calls the perfect thoroughbred. He is abusing the Americans lor braggadocios, and 
their public men for submitting to the vanity of the people, and in the next sentence 
exhibits a sample of the most farcical bluster, and convinces us that he himself had 

* Travels in Nortk Araftrioa. 



Slavery m the South. 23 

been filled so brim-full of the silliest Canadian vanities, as to believe that the blue 
noses could licklhe Northern, and the blacks settle the Southern States — the settling 
on which the amiable Governor-general relies with so much complacency, being, of 
e, something like that of St. Domingo. This licking and settling is almost as 
ridiculous as Alvan Stewart's habeas corpus case in Utica, when Mr. Munn's old ne- 
gro woman was frightened almost to death at the prospect of being made a free labor- 
er — or the .similar affair of Dr. Hudson at Northampton, where the habeas-corpused 
slave brought an action for false imprisonment against the poor philanthropist — or Mr. 
Hoar's solemn question to the iMassachusetts Legislature, in his account of the mission 
to the South, when he gravely asks w nether the States are all conquered provinces of 
South Carolina — or Mr. Clarkson's playing the part of Gregory the VII.; issuing his 
bulls to the good people of the United States, and denouncing the errors of omission, 
and commission perpetrated by the framers of the Federal Constitution — or Col. 
MilchePs late work, which proves to the satisfaction of the English public, that Na- 
poleon was a dolt and a coward \ 

We had no intention, however to dwell on Lord Sydenham'slnonsense, but adver- 
ted to the passage merely for the purpose of introducing the remarks upon it of a 
much abler and more distinguished man. "Lord Sydenham,' says the celebrated ex- 
Chancellor, is thoughtless enough to view with a kind of exultation the prospect of a 
negro insurrection, as a consequence of the United States daring to wage war with 
England. Misguided, short sighted man! and ignorant, oh, profoundly ignorant of the 
things that belong to the peace and the happiness of either color in the new world! A 
negro revolt in our islands, where the whites are a handful among their sable brethren, 
might prove fatal to European life, but the African, at least, would be secure as far as 
security would be derived from the successful shed ling of blood. But on the contiiK.'.'. 1 !, 
where the numbers of the two colors are evenly balanced,* and all the arms are in the 
white man's hands, who but the bitterest enemy of the unhappy slaves could bear to con- 
template their wretchedness in the attempt by violence to shake of their chains." Yet 
this is the wretchedness which the pretended friends of the negro in England and 
in America, not only bear to contemplate, but greedily seek to bring about — let it 
come exclaims the Senator of Quincy in the ecstacy of anticipated enjoyment— let it 
come repeats the philanthropist of Utica, who entertains his guests on alternate courses 
of free-labor sugars - ]- and abolition prints, and discusses, with the same coolness, an 
ice cream, and the cutting of Southern throats. % But we of the South regard the 
catastrophe deprecated by Lord Bougham with horror, and believing it to be the cer- 
tain consequence of the abolition of slavery in the United States, we say to the aboli- 
tionists, for the sake of the negro, cease from your machinations — setting aside every 
other argument and reason against your projects, this single one is conclusive — there 
is but one alternative for the African in America — he must live a slave, or from causes 
which no human power or influence can control, he must cease to live at all. 

Our objections, therefore, to the manumission of the blacks, may be stated like 
those of Mr. Grosvenor, to the abolition of the slave trade. One of them is, that it 
would destroy the negroes; it is unnecessary to give any more. 

To one then who is content to view the affairs of human life in their chequered and 
sad reality, and is not deluded by visions of imaginary equality and happiness never 
yet enjoyed among men, the condition of silvery, as one of the permanently estab- 
lished conditions of society, presents no such hideous features as are conjured up in 

* Lord Brougham does not state the case with all its strength. In the slave States the number 
of whites to blacks is as five to three. 

t Nothing can be more inconsistent with their professed good will to the negro, than the refusal 
of the abolitionists to consume slave-grown Sugar, for although the negro is always sure of food, 
clothing, etc., his enjoyments are materially promoted by the prosperous condition of the master. 
The condition of slave and master is indeed the only one securing an intimate union between the 
interest of labor and capital. In England the object is manifest — to give a monoply of the sugar 
market to her own colonies. In America, our abolition party, in their blind imitation of Exeter 
hall, have taken a position precisely the reverse of that of England — the American party discourage 
their own country's production, for the benefit of foreigners. 

t This gentlemen on his supper tables, displays, among the dishes, pictures of imaginary doings 
of masters and slaves, with whips, chains, handcuffs, etc., to improve the appetite of his guests. 



24 Slavery in the South. 

the fancies of real and pretended philanthropists. It is the position in which it has 
pleased Divine Providence to place the poor and the feeble in all ages, and almost all 
countries, which he has recognized and established as a form of social life, and, for 
the regulation of which, he has prescribed rules that, if duly regarded, secure to the 
slave all the benefits physical, moral, and religious, which the laboring poor can ever 
hope to command. 

When compared with free labor, it will be found that each condition has its bene- 
fits and its evils to the whole community — to the destitute and to the rich, the laborer 
and the lord; that whatever may be true as to the superior advantages of free over 
slave labor in other countries, where no radical difficulty prevents the manumitted 
serf from melting into the mass of the dominant people, there is no choice left us in 
America where the slave is an inferior race, of different color, with whom the 
master will never unite; that the cultivation of the South requires the preservation of 
the only species of labor which she is able to command, and, without which, our 
fields would be abandoned; that to the slave himself, his present condition is not only 
the best, as securing to him advantages, comforts, enjoyments, which the African 
never before possessed, but it is his only security from the operation of circumstances, 
which would either gradually wear away his kind, or suddenly extinguish it in blood. 

These are the conclusions to which our argument conducts us, and we leave it 
with every well meaning man to determine, how he can with a clear conscience, lend 
his aid, to an agitation which seeks to bring about by violence a catastrophe so dis- 
astrous to society, so injurious to the master, so destructive to the slave? Can he — 
dare he meddle with a question, with which he has no immediate concern, against the 
protests of those most interested, and with the almost certainty that his interference 
will produce incalculable evil to the object of his care. W. G. 



Charleston — Walker &. Burke, printers, 3 Broad-bt. 



